A question for you guys: Do you think it would be safe to ship a motherboard with the CPU in it? I'm thinking about selling my current Mobo + CPU as a combo deal. I know that the chips are in there pretty firmly, but I've seen videos of what a package can go through while being shipped. I still have the little plastic thing the CPU came in, but I don't have the box.

Aaaaahhhh, I think I see something, N versus A, eh? ;D I see what you're saying good chap!

In regards to the off-topic purpose of this thread - I went ahead and hopped onto the Corsair Vengeance K90 band wagon today! :O Got it for about $125 before tax, not too bad, good ol' Micro Center. :P My GOD this thing looks SLICK, feels insanely light for typing, and is just very comfortable. As I'm typing right now I feel like that one other guy in that other thread who said he didn't want to stop typing, I seriously don't.... it's just too amazing! >_<

Honestly my only quarrels with the Corsair K90 would be the following:

a - I don't care that some of the keys (less-used) are not mechanical, but honestly, my old Logitech G15 v2 which was not mechanical felt better than the non-mechs on this keyboard, they make the rest of the thing feel so bloody good, but then the non-mechs are just horrid, they feel very meh. They feel heavy. My old keyboard felt almost like a mechanical keyboard, but just not quite there, there is certainly a difference, the audible difference should be obvious, but the feel is there, however they just were not as heavy.

b - Secondly, the LED back-lit I'm having an issue with right now thus I've turned it off. Maybe it is because I've had a long crazy day hanging out with some old buds, driving down to Chicago and all sorts of crap, but my eyes are tired, so that could be the issue. Anyways, I turned the back-lighting off because even at dim it was bugging my eyes, it's just too extreme. On the G15, only the keys themselves were lit and it was only the see-through part that had the little insignia for whatever character on it, not in this keyboard's case, it's all around each key too, and thus it is over-bearing, I'd say. To the extent of yes, bugging my eyes, I dare not try it with the lights off right about now, lol! Yes, this WAS with my lights on, which yes, I usually have my lights on, and they are fluorescent, so the fact the back-lighting is THAT strong that it will bug me with these lights on, should tell you something.

There is so much to love, but I think something that isn't getting much love from what I've seen/read, maybe I should read more reviews... happens to be the wrist-rest. Holy Good God, praise the lord on high! This thing has a kinda rubbery feel to it, is textured with like a bunch of little dimples, and just, wow, it is very awesome. I honestly just want to sit here and type for hours... I think I'll be typing more from now on, that's for sure!

End thoughts? If you have a good $150~ lying around, go buy this thing, or another mechanical keyboard, I know Asera will be displeased that I didn't go for the DAS Ultimate (I was honestly planning to) but I don't know, I don't like buying what I can't try first, and while one employee at Micro Center was like "absolutely not, because if we open the box then we have to sell it as used" I found a different employee who readily opened the box and let me just feel the keys real quickly and I was like, yes.

Buy this keyboard. BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTT

---------- Post added 2012-03-17 at 07:21 AM ----------

Originally Posted by noteworthynerd

A question for you guys: Do you think it would be safe to ship a motherboard with the CPU in it? I'm thinking about selling my current Mobo + CPU as a combo deal. I know that the chips are in there pretty firmly, but I've seen videos of what a package can go through while being shipped. I still have the little plastic thing the CPU came in, but I don't have the box.

I would not ship it like that, I think that's honestly just asking for trouble. =S I would not risk it man, especially considering you're also here in the US. ;p

the gold plated block is more of a pride of ownership thing, adn the EK block is nice, but the plastic look reminds me too much of the old home made blocks from ten years ago

Heh, I know it's a pride thingeh. I personally ordered it because it was literally the most available one though. Seems there may have been good reason for it. -.-It's a pain in the ass to get the fittings on and the mounting of the block isn't exactly intuitive.

Originally Posted by Cyanotical

also, since this is not the computer forum, i can say things like "Koolance is better", and i dont have to post anything about backing that statement up

Well, you can always ignore someone telling you to start making sense. You "can" go around claiming stuff, but that's not gonna actually get you anywhere if you don't back it up.

Originally Posted by Cyanotical

which does bring up something i have been thinking about, as a professional, im not supposed to have brand favorites or say things like "brand N is better then brand A"

but does the average consumer ever wonder why professionals avoid certain brands, or stick with the same ones time after time? or do they even notice?

Usually, "avoid certain brands" tends to translate into "fanboy of the competition" or something, heh.

not necessarily fanboyism, i would define a fanboy as someone who likes a brand so much they don't see the faults in it, and will continue to like that brand regardless of cost or evidence against

what i mean is that as you work on computers, you start to see trends among brands for performance or reliability, or even just plain customer service, and develop brand favoritism, not fanboyism

everyone has their favorite brands and has their reasons why, it's why brands exist in the first place, you develop these favoritisms over years of trial and error, brand A doesn't work for you 3 computers in a row, so you switch to brand B and never have a problem again, it's safe to assume that brand B is now your favorite, and while you may not admit it, if faced with a choice of A or B on a shelf, you will almost always pick B, but to tell someone else that A is bad and B is good is a faux pas in the tech world, even though everyone is thinking it

so im just wondering if people notice that a tech or admin always picks brand B instead of A

what brought it up was a your talking about getting the EK block instead of the swiftech, and the possible reasons for going with EK instead of Koolance, or Danger Den, or any of the other waterblock makers

Obviously, but it matters how one says it and stuff, putting in the "versus" part does not help your case. ;p

the 'versus' is what it leads to, if i say "Nvidia is better for multi-gpu setups then AMD(crossfire in windowed mode?), and among Nvidia cards, EVGA is the best brand to purchase, likewise, AMD is often better for single card performance and has less driver crash issues (nvlddmkm has crashed lol), and among AMD cards, Sapphire is the best"

that is not going to stop an AMD fan from immediately arguing with me, rather then asking why i made that statement, or stopping to think why SLI is more common then Xfire

most of brand arguing comes from self justification of a purchase, if you just purchased an XFX HD7970, then you will probably be pretty offended at the fact that i said Sapphire is the best AMD brand, because that means you made a wrong purchase, and your first response will be to argue against me about that in order to maintain the feeling that you made a good choice when buying the XFX brand

however, from the Nvidia side, why does one not wonder when they purchase an MSI 580, why every tech has an EVGA card (if you are within EVGA's market), and why they love EVGA so much

IMO brand favoritism should be encouraged, if everyone bought EVGA GPUs, then MSI, Asus, Zotac, and PNY would have to stop and look at what EVGA is doing to garner so much business, and then improve their own businesses to remain competitive, but because we (as in the tech community) are not supposed to say things like "your new laptop, its a piece of crap, next time buy X" this leads to companies maintaining a "that'll do" attitude

Heh. Well, to be fair in a lot of places customers only have to interface with the shop they buy it in. The only time I've gone right to the manufacturer was the AX 850, where I knew it'd take less time sending it to Corsair (cheaper too! O_o) than sending it back to shop.

Amusingly, Corsair were even faster than I imagined. I knew they would just send me a new one upon receiving my defective unit, but the replacement literally arrived within 24 hours of Corsair receiving my faulty one.

It all depends on if you have enough case fan power connectors on your motherboard (or alternatively, you could buy fan power splitters).

I prefer a bunch of small fans, but others like fewer, larger fans.

Question to the regulars: If you were in going to be in the market for a new video card within the next few months, what would you buy? Let's say $500 max budget... I was thinking that the obvious choice was the 7950, but do you think it's worth waiting for Kepler?